ArpTelnet

A terminal featuring add-on emulators and a built-in TELNET client.

Introduction

This manual provides a brief overview on using ArpTelnet. It will concentrate mainly on detailing the various menus and dialogs found in the program; hopefully basic usage of the application is familiar enough that little task-oriented documentation is needed.

The current version of ArpTelnet can be found on the Angry Red Planet web site, at <URL:http://www.angryredplanet.com/beos/ArpTelnet.html>.

ArpTelnet is a terminal application somewhat similar to Be's own Terminal program. Some of its main features, and divergences from the Be-supplied terminal, can be summarized as follows:

Includes an add-on emulator architecture. The ArpTelnet application itself comes with an emulator add-on from VT220, VT100, VT52, and XTerm style emulators; other types of emulators can also be added through a plug-in architecture. (This emulator also used to be much better than the emulator in Be's own terminal, but I think they have improved that a lot in recent releases.)
Includes a built-in TELNET client. By doing so, the TELNET application works better with the terminal. For example, it correctly communicates to the host machine which terminal emulations are available and informs the terminal when TELNET sessions are starting and stopping. In addition, it is easy to make shortcuts that automatically start up ArpTelnet and connect to a host.
Improvements to terminal interaction. Better management of the terminal size and resizing behavior, text encoding, scrolling, text paste, etc.
More terminal configuration options. Including full control over colors, size and utilization of the history buffer, terminal modes such as CR/LF interpretation, etc.

Quick Start

Before diving into the application, you should become familiar with a basic concept used by ArpTelnet, the session. A session is simply a collection of all the application's current settings and modes. This includes the remote device it is connect to (shell or TELNET) and the current terminal emulator being used.

The current session can be save into a file, which can later be loaded by ArpTelnet -- either through the ArpTelnet application or by simply double clicking on the session file from Tracker. When double clicked, a new ArpTelnet window will be created, that session loaded into it, and a connection started. The ArpTelnet distribution comes with two standard session files, named Shell and Telnet, which provide default configurations for running a local shell or TELNET client, respectively.

This mechanism allows you to create short-cuts for connecting to sites you often visit. For example, I often want to TELNET to the Angry Red Planet site. To make this easy, I started up ArpTelnet once and used the TELNET connection to enter in the angryredplanet.com host and connect. After making other configurations I like for this session (history buffer size, swap backspace/delete, etc.), I used Session/Save As... to save these settings into a new file. Now when I double click on this file, ArpTelnet is started and automatically connects to angryredplanet.com.

Main Window

When ArpTelnet is started, you are presented with the main application window. This is dominated by the terminal screen itself, into which you type text and see results. Along the top of the window is a menu bar, with the following pull-down menus and their items:

SESSION

Connect	Start a new connection in this session. If this is a "shell" connection, a new bash shell will be immediately started. If this is a "telnet" connection, a window will pop up into which you can enter the host and port to which it will connect. (The default port is 23, the standard TELNET protocol port.)
Disconnect	End the current connection.
Settings	Open the session settings window. See Settings Window below.
Open	Open a new session from a file, replacing the current.
Save	Save the current session.
Save As	Save the current session into a new file.
Help	Show this manual.
About ArpTelnet	Fascinating information about the program.
Test Screen	Print a bunch of text to the terminal screen, showing the various text style options it supports. This can be useful when editing the terminal's colors and fonts.
Quit	Close the ArpTelnet window.

EDIT

Copy	Place the currently highlighted text into the clipboard.
Paste	Send any text in the clipboard into the terminal session.
Select All	Highlight all of the terminal's text.

CONNECTION

This menu allows you to select one of the available devices to which the terminal is attached. Currently two devides are included, a local Shell and remote TELNET. The last menu item, About Device, shows some enlightening information about the device that is currently selected.

TERMINAL

Usable Size	Change the logical size of the terminal. This is the area of the terminal's screen that can be used by programs running in it. Options are: 80 x 24 80 column wide, 24 columns high. 80 x 25 80 column wide, 25 columns high. 80 Columns 80 column wide, high enough to fill the window. 132 x 24 132 column wide, 24 columns high. 132 x 25 132 column wide, 25 columns high. 132 Columns 132 column wide, high enough to fill the window. Lock At n x m Lock the terminal size at the window's current size. Size With Window Make terminal width and height follow the window's size.
Font Size	Select the size of the font that the terminal is using.
Encoding	Select the character encoding to use. The terminal only deals in 8-bit character codes, rather than the BeOS's native Unicode multibyte character codes. This menu allows you to select the Unicode symbols assigned to these 256 character codes.
Operation Modes	Various terminal operating modes. These are the the same as the similarily named options in the terminal Settings Window, described below.
Soft Reset	Perform a soft reset of the terminal and emulator state.
Hard Reset	Perform a full reset of the terminal and emulator state.
Resize To Fit	Resize the window so that it perfectly fits the size selected in the "Usable Size" menu. This is the same has pressing the zoom button in the window title.

EMULATION

This menu allows you to select to use one of the available add-on emulations. In addition, its last item, About Emulator, displays various human-readable bits of information about the emulator that is currently selected.

Session Button

On the top right side of the window is a small control called the "session button". This provides quick access to session configuration in these ways:

Pressing the button opens the session settings window. See Settings Window below.
Dragging out of the button allows you to create a new session file into the folder you drop to, just like selecting "Save As" from the Session menu.
Dragging a session file into the button causes the dropped file to be loaded into the terminal, just like selecting "Open" from the Session menu.

Settings Window

The ArpTelnet Settings Window provides additional control over the current terminal session. In the top portion of the window contains a number of panes for controlling different parts of the application; these will be detailed below. Along the bottom of the window are three buttons for acting on the entire session:

Make Default	Save the current settings as the default settings. These will then be used any time you start up ArpTelnet directly, without any session file.
Revert	Changes back to the settings you had when you first opened the settings window. This includes options in the main window, such as the current emulator and remote connection.
Done	Close this dialog. (Note that settings are applied as you change them, so there is no need to manually apply them.)

Session Settings

The Session pane is used to control general behaviour of the application. There are two groups of settings: Startup is how the program behaves when it first starts running, and Shutdown is how it stops running.

STARTUP

Window at Current Location	If set, the terminal window will initially be placed at the same location on the screen as when the session was last saved. If not set, it will be placed in the center of the screen.
Window at Current Size	If set, the terminal window will have the same size as when the session was last saved. If not set, it will start up large enough to contain all of the terminal's rows and columns.
Window in Current Workspace	If set, the terminal window will initially be opened in the same workspace as when it was last saved (activating that workspace if it is not currently visible). If not set, it will start in the currently active workspace.

SHUTDOWN

Confirm Session Close at Exit	If set, when the terminal window is closed while the session is currently connected, a dialog box will appear asking you if you want to disconnect the session. If not set, the session will be disconnected immediately without confirming.
Exit When Session Ends	If set, the terminal window will close as session as the current session ends. If not set, it will remain so that you can continue using it. Note that it is probably not a good idea to turn this option on when using the Telnet device: a Telnet session can end for due to unexpected problems with the network connection, so closing down the application when this happens can be undesireable.
Automatically Save Session	If set, when the terminal exits the current session settings will be saved. If not set, the session will only be saved when you explicitly do so.

Terminal Settings

Picture of Terminal Settings pane

The Terminal pane provides control over the operation of the terminal itself, with three main groups of settings: Style controls how the terminal displays its text on the screen, Mode includes various modes that the terminal has with its remote device, and Interaction controls how the terminal interacts with you.

STYLE

Color	Select a terminal color to edit. In addition to the standard text, highlight, and cursor colors, you can change the color assigned to each ANSI color interpeted by the terminal.
Font	Select the font the terminal uses to display its text. This popdown list includes all of the fixed-size font families that you have installed in your system. The terminal will try to find appropriate bold, italic and plain fonts in the family; if it can't do so, characters with those attributes will just use the plain font.
Size	Select the size of the displayed font.
Encoding	(To the right of the font size control.) Select the text encoding that the terminal uses for its 8-bit character set.

MODE

Receive CR as CRLF	If selected, a single linefeed character received by the terminal is transformed into a carriage return and linefeed.
Send Enter as CRLF	If selected, pressing the Enter key sends both a carriage return and linefeed character. Otherwise, only a linefeed is sent. You typically want this turned off when connecting to a local shell, and turned on for TELNET sessions.
Swap Backspace/Del	If selected, the codes sent out by the backspace and delete keys are swapped. That is, pressing backspace results in character code 0x7F, and pressing delete results in CTRL-H.
Auto Wrap Cursor	If selected, adding text to the far right of the screen causes the cursor to wrap to the next line.
Inverse Video	If selected, the terminal's background and foreground colors are swapped.

INTERACTION

Verify Paste	If selected, pasting or dragging text to the terminal will first display the text to send, allowing verification and editing.
Quick Paste	If selected, pressing the secondary mouse button will either: (1) immediately copy the currently highlighted region to the terminal; or, if no text has been highlighted, (2) perform a paste of the clipboard as if Edit/Paste had been selected.
Scroll on Input	Scroll the terminal window on user input so that the cursor is visible (if it isn't already).
Scroll on Output	Scroll the terminal window on terminal output so that the cursor is visible (if it isn't already).

Other Settings

History Lines	Set the number of history lines that the terminal stores before old ones are deleted.
History Use	Select how lines should be moved into the screen's history. Options are: Off Nothing is put in the history. Minimal Only lines that scroll off the top of the screen are placed into the history. Normal Minimal plus text in the screen when it is cleared. Aggressive Normal plus any text that is scrolled up so that it disappears.
Soft Reset	Perform a soft reset of the terminal and emulator state.
Hard Reset	Perform a full reset of the terminal and emulator state.

Shell Settings

The Shell pane is used to configure the "Shell" device (and thus only appears when you are currently using that device). It contains a single control, which is the command that is executed to start the shell.

Telnet Settings

The Telnet pane is used to configure the "Telnet" device (and thus only appears when you are currently using that device). It contains two controls, for setting the default host machine and port to connect with. These two items can also be set in the connection window that appears when starting a Telnet connection.